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Introduction
This work will deal with the above named task of discussing a film theory by Brian McFarlane with regard to the novel ”My Brilliant Career” by the Australian author S. ... S. Miles Franklin which came out in 1901 and its film adaptation of the same name which was directed by the Australian Gillian Armstrong.
”We engage intellectually, imaginatively with a narrative text, sensuously – through sight and hearing - with a filmic narrative text”, Brian McFarlane. Although this theory appears to be manifest and logic, its contents are discussed by several other film theorists like Christian Metz, Roland Barthes and Adrian Tilley, just to name the most relevant. They all agree on the message of the novel, namely that a novel works with a verbal system and the film uses sounds, words and pictures in order to deliver the narrative. ... In order to accomplish this investigation, the background of McFarlane’s thesis will be laid out and thus a better understanding of the various points of view will be provided.
The second chapter of this work will focus on the novel ”My Brilliant Career” by Miles Franklin. It will deal with its autobiographical influences, the impact it had on Franklin’s life and its general reception. There will be attempts to draw already first relations between McFarlane’s theory and the novel.
Merely the same procedure will be undertaken in the third part, only the theory will be applied on the film adaptation of the novel. The film with the same title as the novel itself was produced in Australia in 1979. Eleanor Whitcombe based the screenplay on the novel by Miles Franklin, but altered it slightly. Therefore, it will be closely examined in how far these alterations are of importance for the understanding of the film. Furthermore, a few parallels between Miles Franklin’s and Gillian Armstrong’s lives will pointed out, since those have an impact on their individual works that should not be neglected. As well as in the chapter before, references to several film theories can be found. ... Here, comparisons between the novel and the film adaptation will be drawn in reference to McFarlane’s theory. ...
1 In Theory
Brian McFarlane does not present his readers merely a theory concerning the different narratives of a novel and its film adaptation, but offers a whole concept that includes many presumptions and consequences. In order to understand the part relevant for this work it is necessary to grasp the complete idea. ... Thus a narrative is a story that can be told by different means: it can be told orally, written down in a book or it can be shown in a film.
”The narrative in a novel is conveyed through two kinds of voices: those attributed to various characters in direct speech and that of the author’s narration. ... ] In the film adaptation, actors can be given the words of characters, either direct from the novel or in some modified form. ... ”
Here, Tilley already hints at McFarlane’s theory that a novel and its film adaptation work differently through various forms of narratives. ... ”Film [. ... ” , as the European film theorist Christian Metz puts it.
”Novel and film can share the same story, the same ‘raw materials’, but are distinguished by means of different plot strategies which alter sequence, highlight different phases, which – in a word – defamiliarize the story.” When adapting a novel the film-maker inevitably creates a new work, since a novel cannot be transformed completely into a film. The reason for this are ”that the novelist makes his narrative wholly through the use of the verbal language” and ”a novel can render thought processes much more directly than a film can” . Only limited means are at a film-maker’s disposal to adapt crucial elements of a novel such as inner monologues or descriptions of landscapes, character traits, etc. ...
”The novel draws on a wholly verbal sign system, the film variously, and sometimes simultaneously, on visual, aural, and verbal signifiers. ... ”
Signifiers do not only play an important role in McFarlane’s theory but also in the complete field of film study. ... All those elements require special attention when adapting a novel into a film. Actually, exactly the same problems occur when trying to write a novel based on a film. Mostly the novel is not quite as good as the film because it merely tries to retell the events of the film without being able to transfer the power of the images properly.
McFarlane though – when comparing novel and film - differentiates between low and high iconicity, high and uncertain symbolic functions, conceptual and direct, sensuous work, linearity and sequentiality of the story, and more. ”The verbal sign, with its low iconicity and high symbolic function, works conceptually, whereas the cinematic sign, with its high iconicity and uncertain symbolic function, works directly, sensuously, perceptually.” Accordingly, a novel is based upon a concept – an idea or a plan, whereas a film directly addresses the senses of its audience and evokes some kind of reaction. Readers of a novel are tangled in a complex story that mostly develops very slowly, they can go back and reread a passage if necessary and their imagination can work more freely than in the process of watching a film. ”Because of its high iconicity, the cinema has left no scope for that imaginative activity necessary to the reader’s visualization of what he reads.” Actually, Brian McFarlane is not the only theorist who works with this kind of idea. Graeme Turner states that ”Film takes words out of narrative and replaces them with sights and sounds, appealing directly to the senses.” McFarlane himself quotes another writer who sums up, ”Film is a multi-sensory communal experience emphasizing immediacy, whereas literature is a mono-sensory experience that is more conducive to reflection.” All those theories and statements complement each other and strengthen McFarlane’s observation.
In fact, McFarlane’s theory appears to be quite logical. It is out of question that words of a novel have to be transformed in some way in order to suit a film. ... The foundation for a film adaptation has to be a good screenplay. ... Therefore it becomes comprehensible that a film adaptation – although its basis story is given – always is a new, independent piece of art. The closer the parallels between a novel and its film adaptation are, the more disappointing it will probably be since even the best adaptation cannot fulfill the reader’s expectations in a complete measure. Brian McFarlane gives the reason for this fact by explaining the fundamental differences between those two media and he also shows a solution to the problem by suggesting to look at each work separately.
In theory, McFarlane’s concept seems to be practical. ... As pointed out above, McFarlane deals – together with colleagues – with the theory of different receptions basing on different deployment of signifiers. ... Most of their treatises are on the problems that occur when adapting a novel because of the given facts: a verbal sign system has to be transformed into visual, aural and verbal signifiers which describe the cinematic sign system. Difficulties that require special attention and thought when adapting a novel are for example time, monologues, landscape, character traits and more. ... ” A novel can cover a very long period of time, sometimes it narrates the story of several generations. The length of a film is normally limited to approximately 100 minutes. Therefore the film-maker has to used deceits to make the audience believe a certain amount of time has passed. ... On the other hand, ”the film-maker can economize in adapting descriptive elements, especially in regard to description of place, when a couple of carefully planned shots can give as full a sense of setting as several pages of description might do.” The choice of setting does not leave a lot of space for the audience’s imagination but instead mirrors the director’s impression of a certain passage or the atmosphere in the novel. The setting instantly reveals a certain atmosphere that is going to determine the tone of the whole film.
A novelist has the opportunity of being able to use a huge variety of stylistic devices to implicate the atmosphere, tone or feelings he needs to create for a certain passage of the novel or the whole work altogether. ... A film-maker has only a limited range of possibilities to depict those things. ... It is very important to choose people that exactly fit the character and are able to communicate all the emotions the author of the novel and the director of the film intended to demonstrate.
”Even a great director will be dependent on actors who will look, sound and move as he wants them to, on set designers and art directors who will create the material aspects of the world in which the film is set, on a cameraman who will know how to light and photograph the staged action – the mise-en-scene – to record and complete the experiences being created on the set or on location by those other collaborators.”
As it becomes visible from this quotation, not only the film director or the writer of the screenplay determine the turnout of the adaptation, but many other persons involved as well. Brian McFarlane with reference to the American novelist John Hersey points out that another obstacle which has to be overcome is ”the differences arising from single an and multiple authorship. The author of the novel is the sole creator of his work with complete control over selection and omission, over the emphasis in his work.” In film, the exact opposite is the case, a crew of people have to work closely together and therefore various influences characterize their work.
Another major difference between novel and film is their structure. A novel often follows a clear linearity which ”favours the gradual accretion of information about action, characters, atmosphere, ideas, and this mode of presentation of itself, contributes to the impression received.” Apparently a film adapts not only the plot but also the novel’s structure.
”However, through viewing time (and, thus sequentiality) is controlled much more rigorously than reading time, frame-following-frame is not analogous to the word-following-word experience of the novel. ... We do not ordinarily view a film frame by frame as we read a novel word by word.”
It becomes obvious that the novel’s and film’s structure only seem to be similar, in practice they differ greatly from one another.
Approximate Word count = 8665
Approximate Pages = 34.7
(250 words per page double spaced)
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